


The Place That You Left

by CantStopImagining



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Angst, F/F, Ficlet, delia centric, set during 6.05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 20:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9841838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: It’s an absence she never stops feeling, deep down inside her bones, as though part of her is missing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This season has given me fuel for so much angst I can only apologise. This is only short but it's been a while since I wrote something for these two that wasn't a modern AU and I wanted to get back into it slowly.

As soon as the door closes behind her, Delia sinks heavily into her mattress, fingers searching out the comfort of the thick blanket across the end of the bed. It’s becoming exhausting, pretending to be this blissfully happy, bubbly person, whilst feeling as though half of her is on the other side of the world. She pulls the blanket up over her lap, glad that she hadn’t made her bed this morning, the dishevelled mess of covers a comfort. (Patsy would hate it, she thinks, wryly).

It’s not that Delia doesn’t like the others, doesn’t enjoy their company. The peels of laughter, the smiles of fondness… they're genuine. She is glad to have grown closer to everybody with Patsy’s absence.

But that’s just it. It’s an absence she never stops feeling, deep down inside her bones, as though part of her is missing. 

And Patsy hasn’t written. Still. Which shouldn't be so worrying, but it _is_. There’s no Mam hurriedly stuffing letters away into drawers, behind the thin excuse of not wanting to upset her. Patsy simply isn’t writing, and that almost breaks Delia’s heart even more.

Her own bedroom has become something of a haven to her, a place where she can curl up in pyjamas she’d pinched from Patsy’s drawer (prior to her belongings being removed for Valerie’s arrival - she’d had to swallow down a sob when she’d opened the closet door to find nothing but endless amounts of Trixie’s things), the cracked mirror that means so much to Patsy clasped carefully in her hands, a pile of books borrowed from Phyllis at her bedside. Only there is she allowed to _feel_ in the way that she needs to, without limits. Only there can she let that cheerful, breezy exterior droop for a while.

As eager as she is at the hospital, soaking new information up like a sponge, it leaves her feeling fatigued and faint in a way she hadn’t entirely prepared for. She gets frustrated with herself for forgetting little snippets of information, for the moments where she blearily walks onto the ward and doesn’t remember quite what purpose she has for being there. Once, her memory had been near photographic. The accident has left her with fractures that won’t mend, though the gaping holes in her memory are mostly filled. And it’s taking every part of her not to crumble under the pressure of it all, to keep up that endless energy, endless positivity, that everybody knows her for. To act like that part of her personality wasn’t packed away with Patsy’s belongings and shipped off to Hong Kong when she was.

Sitting on Patsy’s bed - Valerie’s bed, now - in Patsy’s pyjamas, drinking and eating and giggling with Trixie and Barbara and Valerie… it had been nice for a few moments to just pretend like everything was normal. To ignore the fact that she’d spent nights pressed tightly against the back of Patsy in this very room, arms looped around her waist, listening to the steady pound of her heartbeat in the dark of the night, Trixie still away in South Africa. To ignore the nights where she’d ached to tip-toe back in, to curl up with Patsy’s pillow pressed against her face and breathe in the last lingering remains of her perfume and cry herself to sleep.

Still, she _is_ happy to have Valerie join them. She is happy to be a part of this family, this unit of mismatched women from different backgrounds, different walks of life, drawn together by a passion for the same thing, even if she does sometimes feel like she’s on the outside looking in. She’s sometimes startled by how easily she has slotted into life at Nonnatus, how even without Patsy, she feels as though it’s her home, the only place she could possibly belong.

Well, besides in the arms of the woman she loves.

Closing her eyes, Delia shifts up the bed, reaching for the mirror that’s tucked safely under her pillow. She draws the covers in around her, pressing her lips briefly to the shiny surface of the compact, a ghost of a kiss meant for someone else, before settling her head on the pillow, the mirror still firm in her grasp.

Behind her eyelids, she sees Patsy, bright ocean-blue eyes and soft red hair, the way her nose scrunches when she laughs, that little half-smirk reserved only for her. She sighs contentedly, drifting into sleep almost immediately, knowing full-well what she’ll be dreaming of. The same thing she dreams of every night.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me @katemckutie on tumblr.


End file.
